


apollo's chariot

by borage (haechansheaven)



Series: oikawa week 2020 [7]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Day 7: New beginnings, M/M, Oikawa Tooru-centric, Oikawa Week 2020, Post-Canon, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25434574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haechansheaven/pseuds/borage
Summary: Hajime will grab him by the hand and follow him from his genesis to his evolution, and watch, with pride, as Tooru blooms and starts anew.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Series: oikawa week 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832464
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36
Collections: Oikawa Week 2020





	apollo's chariot

**Author's Note:**

> for oikawa week, day 7: new beginnings

This time, leaving Japan feels final. The bag on his back is a little fuller with gifts and souvenirs, and, this time, no one is there to say good bye. (They’re mostly _see you later_ ’s that he wants to will into reality.) His teammates don’t really get the sentimentality of this moment, but they let Tooru bask in the last minutes before they board the plane and head over an ocean and return to the country that now calls him theirs.

(This is a lie. Part of Tooru’s soul will always belong to Japan, so long as his memories are rooted there. Hajime tells him such—says that Japan will always be his home if he ever needs a place to rest his head or find his center again.

Tooru wants to say thank you, that he wants that offer to be open for the rest of an eternity. He doesn’t, though. Instead, he hugs Hajime like they’re graduating high school again, and hop on a plane.)

It’ll take longer than a day to return to Argentina, and throughout his journey, Tooru will remember, again, and remind himself, again, of everything that has led to these moments. There are the countless instances in his childhood that encouraged him to begin, the matches that told him to _do better_ , and the ascension to the world stage and all the challenges that came along with it.

He stands to stretch his legs; wander up and down the aisles as most of the other inhabitants sleep. In the space in front of the bathrooms, he leans down to touch his toes, relishing in the tugging in his muscles. At his seat, his phone screen lights up once, twice, though he doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to admit that he misses home already.

 **Dad** [19:07] _You did well_

 **Dad** [19:09] _We’re so proud of you_

The journey to get here has been long, and Tooru knows that it’s wrong to say that it’s over. It’s _false_ to say that it’s over. So long as he stands on center court, Tooru, the hero of his own story, will continue to exist. Hajime will tell him, “ _See you next time_ ,” Wakatoshi will expect to see him again, and his reign will never end. Shoyou still calls him a Grand King, and Tooru will chase after the throne that he belongs in.

There’s a layover, and it gives Tooru another brief moment to breathe; scroll through his phone at the messages he missed and let his parents know that he’s almost there, hesitating to use the word _home_.

It’s a weird sort of word that Tooru thought he knew the meaning for and realizes, now, that he doesn’t. Home, people say, can be a person, or a place, or a thing. Tooru thinks that he doesn’t understand the validity of it. A home, then, doesn’t have to be a place, or a person, or a thing, that you can return to. It simply has to be something that exists in your heart.

Instead, he thinks of it this way: Japan is the home of his roots which fostered his growth into a sprout and then a sapling, and into the beginning of what he _is_. Across an ocean, in a country that now claims him, Tooru learned to be himself, became himself, and _is_ himself.

If he thinks of it as a person, they are in Japan, in an air-conditioned room, ice-bath tucked into the corner. Hajime sorts through emails, reads articles from medical journals, and works harder to understand the way that the athlete’s body is constantly torn apart and put back together. _I support them_ , Hajime tells him before he leaves, _and one day I’ll support you again, too_.

Tooru wants to tell him that he already supports Tooru more than anyone. Hajime, after all, was the one who laughed when he had second doubts about moving to Argentina.

 _Don’t be stupid_ , Hajime had said to him. _Your nerves are just excitement. I know you. You’ll get there and you’ll be great. You’re_ Oikawa _, after all. When have you ever fallen flat?_

He wants to remind Hajime of every single moment in his life he hit rock bottom before remembering that Hajime was there for almost every single one of them. And, even if not in person, Hajime was a witness to the process and the aftermath. If Shoyou is Tobio’s sun, fostering his growth and helping him bloom, Hajime is Tooru’s.

Back in Argentina, Hajime is the first person he calls.

“I made it back,” he says into an empty apartment. “I’m home.”

The moment Hajime speaks, it feels warmer, and like he’s being welcomed. “ _I’m glad_.” Pause. “ _Welcome home._ ”

Hajime’s first trip to Argentina is a whirlwind. A mix of everything Tooru did when he first moved, and showing him everything Tooru has come to love: The street vendor down the road from his apartment, the small bookstore where Tooru began the process of learning how to read. A pocket dictionary he owns, children’s books his teammates loaned him, novels assigned to students, and—

“I started to keep a journal,” Tooru explains, waving around an empty notebook he pulls from a shelf, “where I couldn’t write in Japanese. It was a challenge, but it helped.”

“You never were good at easing your way into things, were you?” mutters Hajime, eyes scanning the shelves. Tooru wonders if Hajime feels overwhelmed like he first did when he moved. “I guess that’s why you did fine, huh?”

“Shouldn’t I be saying that to _you_?”

“We both went abroad.” Pulling a book from a shelf, Hajime scans the cover with a blank expression before placing it back. “And we both did more than fine. We did great, to put it simply.”

Tooru laughs and laughs and laughs. He laughs until they’re out of the store and Hajime is jabbing him in the side with his fingers and, yes, they did fine. They did _more_ than fine. He and Hajime have learned to thrive on their own, in their own ways. For as long as they are _Hajime_ and _Tooru_ , they will continue to change, standing on their own.

“We started a trend, don’t you think?” he asks, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

 **Shoyou** [13:42] _WE WON!!! See you at the exhibition match next week! Tell Iwaizumi I say hi!!!!!!_

“That’s too many exclamation points,” says Hajime, peering around Tooru’s shoulder. “Tell him I said _hi_ back. And ask him if he’s stretching his back properly. Last time we spoke, he was havin’ back issues.”

Their worlds will always be in the periphery of the other’s, and Tooru finds comfort and confidence in that. “I’ll be sure to ask.”

The degree to which Shoyou Hinata shines can be overwhelming. Tooru finds himself squinting when he looks at him, as if staring into the sun. He soars through the sky as if pulled forth by Apollo and his chariot, forever cycling through highs and lows. They’re all only human, but sometimes Tooru thinks that they’ve ascended beyond that.

It’s all in his mind, and he knows that, but to a degree, he likes the idea that they’ve pursued their dreams so efficiently that there’s nothing left but to exist among the stars.

Hajime likes to joke that they’ve put Aoba Johsai’s name into the history books, and Tooru likes to tease him and say that it’s only him, and Hajime likes to hang up on him whenever he says that, but he’s not wrong. It was a prophetic move, a prophetic change, a supernova.

They call them the Monster Generation and Tooru prefers to call them untrained beasts, rocketing themselves to the top of the world without blinking an eye. Once upon a time, Tooru was frightened at the prospect of playing against them. And then he took a step onto center court and realized that he, too, belonged there.

On the television screen, Tobio makes a set that is _so, so_ beautiful, that Tooru presses the pads of his fingers into the muscles of his thighs. There’s no catching up to a prodigy who seems to move through the world like a shooting star. (Hajime, instead, had picked him up and tossed him through the skies, anyways. Tooru’s fingers are burnt from coming too close.) Some teammates crowd his apartment, mutters to themselves about Tobio Kageyama, the gem of Japan.

Tooru wants to tell them he’s not the only one. They know that, though, as Shoyou streaks across the screen.

His phone buzzes incessantly, and Tooru watches as the messages appear. There’s maybe fifteen, maybe thirty, all from Hajime, endless questions— _Did you see that?! What the hell was that?!_ —and the occasional, _What are you up to?_ None of them expect immediate answers because Hajime knows Tooru. Answers are piling up, all to be sent at the end of the match, when Tobio and Shoyou shake hands under the net and Tooru wishes he was there, too.

Distance is far, far, far, and Tooru isn’t sure what ways there are to overcome them other than patience.

On the world’s stage, Tooru carries responsibility comfortably on his shoulders. His sharpened, worthless pride has pierced the walls that he so desperately hoped to climb, and gave himself the opportunity to begin all over again in a new world. And Tooru is good at finding opportunities and even better at taking them and running so fast there’s no use in trying to take them back.

He can say that he played them, but he can also say that he’s different now, they all are, and nothing will ever be the same.

And that’s okay.

“It’s late,” Tooru says. “Go to bed,” he says.

“ _I’m not_ ,” lies Hajime.

They’re eight again, Hajime and Tooru hidden under piles of blankets and watching Jose Blanco on the television. Tooru is telling Hajime his dreams and Hajime is telling him that, of course he can do it, he’s Tooru Oikawa, after all. Hajime will grab him by the hand and follow him from his genesis to his evolution, and watch, with pride, as Tooru blooms and starts anew.

Tooru tells Hajime, one day, through a haze of exhaustion, that Shoyou Hinata is like the sun, defying gravity and being pulled through the sky by Apollo and his chariot. It earns him a laugh, a sigh, and a, “ _If anyone is being pulled through the sky, isn’t it you? You’re blazing the trail_.” It’s giving Tooru too much credit, but Hajime has always been the one to cushion his falls.

Hajime tells him that he’s a goal that others are chasing, and that he should keep running and running and running and never stopping until he can’t breathe anymore, and his knees give out.

“ _And I’ll be there, again, to get you back up and running._ ”

Day in and day out, Tooru will work himself until he cannot move anymore. His mind will stay sharp, even when his body does not, and at that moment, _he_ will become Apollo, and he will pull a sun across the sky with his chariot until he can no longer ride between the clouds without crashing into the tops of mountains.

 _You’re insatiable_ , Hajime had told him once. _You’ll never be satisfied_.

Thinking about it, it’s true. Tooru will _never_ be satisfied. There will be no end to his wants, and Tooru will dig his own grave with his own hands before he can stop. He will sprint to the edge of the universe and continue to move with it as it expands, bit by bit, changing his destination. His moving optimum will exist for an eternity and Tooru will always chase it.

“ _Okay_ ,” Hajime admits. “ _I’m a little tired_.”

“Go to bed, then.”

His best friend, his love, his _home_ , is across an ocean, and Tooru only ever sees his face through lagging video calls and pictures that take much too long to load. Every morning he steps into a chariot and pulls Tooru through the sky without hesitation.

“ _Good night_.”

Tomorrow, again, they will take to the skies.

“Good night.”


End file.
